Artist Decoded: Peter Doig

23 Nov 2025 | 3 min read

Following a living artist’s journey is one of the true pleasures of the art world. Whether you’re new to Peter Doig or revisiting his remarkable practice, here are five essential things to know.

Nomadic roots

Doig was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1959. Relocating to Trinidad as a young boy with his Family, travel and new destinations have been a constant in his life. In 2021, he returned to London, where he now lives and works.

Reviewing Doig's catalogue of works, one notices a void, a longing, or a singular figure that permeates the scene. Could this be life imitating art?

Auction Record || $39,862,500

Peter Doig's auction results are a testament to his concrete following and place in contemporary art. Christie's New York 21st Century Evening Sale on 9 Nov 2021, Swamped (1990) sold for just under $40,000,000.

More recently, at Christie's London 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale on 15 Oct 2025, Ski Jacket (1994) sold for £14,270,000, smashing its estimate of £6,000,000 - £8,000,000.

Best Exhibition? Peter Doig: House of Music

The Serpentine, London, is currently showing the 5-star rated exhibition.

Doig’s atmospheric works are paired with a soundtrack curated from his own vinyl collection, played through towering vintage cinema speakers.

10 Oct 2025 - 8 Feb 2026

Having exhibited all over the world, there have been some standout shows that have secured him as an international artist. The Fondation Beyeler in Basel hosted a major exhibition of Doig’s most significant paintings from 23 November 2014 to 22 March 2015, featuring works such as Swamped (1990), his highest-priced auction result to date. In 2020, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo presented Doig’s first solo show in Japan and Tate Britain in London brought together over 50 paintings spanning the last two decades of his work in 2008.

His work is also represented in many of the world’s leading institutions, including MoMA in New York, Tate Britain in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others.

‘The idea of having furniture and chairs here is that some people feel like they can linger, they may even want to have a nap’

Peter Doig

Major Influences

Doig openly acknowledges he has multiple influences. From the Group of Seven, a collective of Canadian landscape painters formed in 1920, to German Expressionism, such as Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, but also from art-history figures like Edvard Munch, Paul Gauguin, Monet or Klimt.

Echo Lake (1998)

Who were the Group of Seven? Formed in 1920 to 1933, the seven painters Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. Casson and Frederick Varley. The group is best known for paintings inspired by the Canadian landscape and initiated the first major Canadian national art movement.

Courthouse Drama

In a fitting conclusion to one of the art world’s more unusual courtroom dramas, Peter Doig has been awarded $2.5 million in sanctions by a US federal court after being sued for denying authorship of a painting.

Following a 2016 trial where Doig took the stand to assert the work wasn’t his. The court has now ordered the painting’s owner, Robert Fletcher, along with Chicago’s Bartlow Gallery Ltd. and their attorney, William Zieske, to pay the $2.5 million in sanctions.

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